Hey, there! Log in / Register
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
It's Being Replaced
By a show called Breaking Wind.
The sound of bleating ass farts , it turns out is actually less annoying than the blue collar Boston accents Wahlberg thought the rest of the country might enjoy.
Most of us who live here can't even stand that accent. My father spent years trying to beat that accent out of me. Even I can't stand it.
It's like the exact opposite of Downton Abbey. It's Downtown Crossing but really, it was unwatchable.
http://cappyinboston.blogspot.com/
Would it be okay here on
Would it be okay here on liberal hub to poke fun at Asian, African, Arab accents, etc? Doubt it. Hypocrites
Easy there, thin-skin
Cappy admitted that he has (or had) the accent, too. It is true that many people in the majority of the country that speaks with the General American accent finds regional accents irritating, comical, and/or dumb-sounding. It's not fair to judge people that way, but that prejudice is a fact. It works in reverse, too.
yes, it works both ways
If I hear a Boston, New York, Southern, Baltimore, or other regional accent, or one of the varieties of Black English (from ghetto to high Baldwin-style), I feel I'm dealing with a more authentic person than someone with that neutral accent. Especially more than people who have a neutral accent plus affectations like "forward O" or creaky voice. I am doubly suspicious of people who say they are from a place like Alabama or Dorchester and have no accent.
Of course it depends on where the person comes from and how old they are: a lot of the country just have a neutral accent (Iowa accent?), and accents are dying out.
Most Americans have the General American accent
because that's what they grew up speaking -- it is the most common accent in American English -- and it has been steadily increasing in the age of ubiquitous television. Regional accents of all types are waning.
What is a "forward O"?
having met some people from
having met some people from Iowa once, I can only imagine a "forward O" is that midwestern/slightly canadian accent where the O's are hard and over pronounced (as in the words ohio, or home, or "don'tcha know" ). With that said, I'd hardly consider Iowa to be a neutral accent, I'd say midwestern is more fitting.
Frances Mcdormand in Fargo
*
Oh
he was a little guy. Kinda funny lookin.
forward O is not Fargo
more like Valley Speak. Fey sounding. I tried to find a reference about it, it was discussed back in the 80s.
My bad
Can you give an example and the phonetic spelling?
Vocal fry and other affectations
"Creaky voice", also known as "vocal fry" is just about the most asinine sounding vocal affectation in existence. It is almost entirely used by women and girls ages 12-35. Think Kardashians, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson. It makes a person sound like a complete airhead, and a pretentious one at that. I am amazed at how prevalent it is. These women should wake up.
Another annoying vocal affectation is the pronunciation of the letter "s" with a very pronounced "sh" sound. This is commont among newscasters and sportscasters. In fact, they are coached to do it. "Thish ish what we will be dishcusshing tonight...".
Daffy Duck
No, this is more like Daffy Duck.
YES
As long as poking fun is funny. Thin skinned. I'm sick of every little thing offending everyone. I HAVE that accent.
PC THIS!
No.
No.
There, the stifling liberal thought police have spoken. Go about your business, citizen.
Actually, what was going on there was the kind of weird
political correctness that conservatives evince when they think white people are being criticized in the tiniest way. Because, you know, who's going to look out for the rights of downtrodden, oppressed white men?
White women, actually. Women
White women, actually. Women are oppressed wicked hard so it's ok to stick up for them.
This is a good point
The kind of dudes who chirp up to say, "Stop oppressing the poor, downtrodden white man!" usually aren't too concerned about the oppression of white women, or of women in general.
Bingo
They also conflate "I don't get special privileges anymore" with "my rights are being taken away" with great sincerity.
Accent Grave
Oh my HEAD. I have the accent, sort of, when I drink. Or if I'm speaking quickly and things just come out the way the come out.
I told my husband that I could see moving to Chicago, except for that accent.
Uh Yeah. A Bostonian (well, I grew up north of the City, live in the City now) bitching about the Chicago accent. nope, not hypocritical in any sense of the word. ;-)
I'm OK with the accent as long as it's not forced. What I don't like is the non-Bostonians mis-pronouncing street names. Tremont is NOT Tree-mont.
It varies within families
My husband grew up in Weymouth - his mother and brother have the Eastern MA accent, he has only traces.
My older son is and always has been very nonlocal (but he can talk very fast, which is also regional). My younger son? Mistuh Meffid all the way. When I call home after school, the accent is the only way I can tell them apart anymore.
I'm really not sure what determines who absorbs an accent and who doesn't, frankly. I just find it interesting that people born a couple years apart and raised in the same household and attending the same schools can end up sounding so different.
The accents dont bother me
But the show was just horrible, just horrible, and I only watched a few minutes, just for kicks. There was absolutely nothing good about it. Good riddance.
Dear God, it was so so so
Dear God, it was so so so very bad.
Painful to watch. They weren
Painful to watch. They weren't even in Boston
The Boston accent..
might be considered a kind of American Cockney.
I don't have it as I'm a goon from the burbs and there are lots of subtle variants like Revere Sicilian or Old Dorchester.
I like its earthiness and the way it grates on some.
It is a legacy of blue collar immigrants trying to communicate with their overlords.
Funny
"It is a legacy of blue collar immigrants trying to communicate with their overlords."
Hahahaha! I love that.
I remember reading about Cockney...
..and the article suggested it's what happens when you dump a bunch of potato famine wretches in London to scrape and scratch for a living in Social Darwinist era Victorian England.
And I thought, my god.. it could be a description of Boston.
Also. too... Australia.
Definitely some traits that survive from Hiberno-English
in the Boston accent, like "youse / yiz" as the plural of "you", and the occasional "d" substitution for initial "th" sounds (shared with but used more aggressively in the NYC accent in the famous "dis / dem / dese / dose").
Don't ask me where "So don't I" for "So do I" came from.
I'd argue for the NYC accent as the American Cockney: it has the larger population of speakers, is centered in the country's largest city, and is more stereotypically recognized in popular culture as a signifier of working-class, no-bullshit, tough-guy bravado. Thanks to the recent spate of Boston-centric film and TV entertainments, and the greater prominence of the stereotypical Masshole sports fan accompanying our recent cluster of Big Four sports championships, we've closed that gap a little bit.
Boston and NYC similarities
I've never put "youse" in the Wicked Good Guide to Boston English because it's something New Yorkers, well, Brooklynites at least, used to say.
"Pockabook" and "sneakas" are two other words both cities share (my Midwestern wife used to refer to "tennis shoes," which, as we East Coasters know, are just a kind of sneakas worn by people who carry rackets and wear white shorts).
"Water" is pronounced the same in both places, although, yes, only Nooyawkas drink cawfee and stand on line (I've mostly lost my accent, but after all these years, I still get tripped up when referring to waiting for a teller at the bank).
Our Rozzie born and bred daughter does not have a local accent, except for when it comes to my sisters. You know, her "ahnts."
"Youse"
Some of my cousins, who lived in a West of Chicago ethnic suburb, used "youse" -- as in (said us to us then-Okies), "Youse guys sure talk funny".
I've never put "youse" in the
I've heard "youse" from Western Massholes (very far West, like Lee) and "yiz" from Connecticutites (who "don't have an accent", according to my dear wife) but I've never heard anything like it around Boston.
Specific to Somerville, maybe?
My Somerville-native college pal and Somerville-native onetime boss both used "youse" and "yiz" interchangeably, including in phrases like "youse guys", "yiz" in more rapid speech. It struck me as directly analogous to (and possibly descended from) the Irish English "you" and "yiz", 2nd-person singular and plural pronouns.
Youse guys are wrong
About 20 years ago I worked with a bunch of guys from Southie. They used "youse" and "youse guys" all the time.
Maybe it depends how old you are Scratchie
I''m 60 and I can remember youse, youse guys, yiz, and yiz guys were used quite extensively in Dorchester, East Boston, South Boston, and Quincy. But I don't hear it anymore these days.
"Yiz" is used in parts of the
"Yiz" is used in parts of the city.
For instance Southie: "what are yiz doin? Yiz wanna go down PS and get a bucket?"
Excellent Quiz: where is your dialect/accent from?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz...
This is really awesome and uncanny at times, as it runs as much off of pronunciation as it does word usage (e.g. shopping cart or carriage?). It put my husband rather diffusely in the Northeast/New England (correct - Northeast, but non-local), sent me back to the Palouse, and pegged my younger son squarely in the Boston arear. It put my older son in metropolitan areas of California ... but he's very non-local in his accent, as are people who came from all over the country to settle there.
It's not an American Cockney
I don't think that's an apt comparison, especially with the absence of any sort of rhyming slang.
Rabbit rabbit rabbit. You won't stop talking, why don't you give it a rest. (now try getting rid of that earworm)
Rhyming slang is only one
Rhyming slang is only one aspect of the Cockney accent. I think the comparison with the NY accent as "universally-recognized signifier of working-class origin" is pretty accurate.
There is all manner of slang rhyme here.
From the old Kevin O'keefe helicopter traffic reports we had Jam and Cram, mope and hope, stall and crawl and the ever present gawker blocker.
Similar usages and patterns may be found if you know where to listen.
I seem to recall the old melodramatic Celtics sports announcer Johnny Most had his own elaborate rhyming lexicography.
Those people may all be dying off but it did exist.
Interesting MA affectation...
I moved here from southern CT about 25 years ago and noticed how people from Boston suburbs use the negative when they mean the positive. As in, "Steve is going to the game and so aren't I" or "Steve is going to the game and so isn't Mary." And I never thought I had an accent until I went back home for the first time after living in Boston for a while. But there is sort of a hard "r" thing where I'm from that I never noticed before and still notice every time I go back.
It's fun to take "r's" from where they are
..and put em where they aren't.
That's the Rosetta Stone for the local accent
I explain it to outsiders as "Mr. Spark from Stah Trek."
I don't really find that to
I don't really find that to be the case, though. I find the dropped "r's" to be a lot more common than the extra "r's" ("idear", "Cuber"), and a lot of people have one but not the other. And I've never heard anyone add an "R" in the middle of a word like "Mr. Spark".
you only add an "r" where it
you only add an "r" where it isn't when the next word starts with a vowel.
What about missing double Ts
Like Ki-ens and Mi-ens.
oh yeah...
...I do that to double t's also.
The missing t
That "missing t" speech pattern is one of the most annoying. It's not just that the "t" is missing in the middle of a word, like "mountain" being pronounced something like "mow-in", there is an almost inaudible "glug" type sound in teh throat that goes where the "t" should be. This happens with the "t" at the end of a word also. Like "what" being pronounced "wha" with a sort of soft exhale at the end. I'm not sure what the technical term for this is, but I call it "glottal stop where the t should be".
I once had a friend who moved
I once had a friend who moved to New-in.
Bri-en
isn't that far away from New-en and New-en Kahnah
One of my favorite parts of Boston English
Seems like you enjoy the positive negative. So don't I!
So don't I!
Exactly!
Breaking...?
Was this about the Wahlberg brother who was a chemistry teacher that got cancer and had to resort to manufacturing methampetamine? Or were they just trying to capitalize on a hot commodity? also, hi Slim and Cappy! Yelp misses you!
Can someone please tell me...
...what is so real about reality shows?
Talk about a contradiction.
Yes, they're all obviously contrived
The Globe review of this show said the rickety machinery of its staged drama was glaringly obvious even by the low standards of the genre.